Wendy's Caramel Corn

My wonderful aunt Wendy was kind enough to send me the recipe for the caramel corn that she made and brought to the cottage last weekend.

This stuff was done perfectly because not every kernel was saturated with caramel, giving the popcorn a nice sweet crunch. But for those of us who are guilty of harbouring a sweet tooth (me) there were more than enough kernels that were covered in caramel. And you better believe they got picked out and devoured pretty fast.

Thank you for the recipe aunt Wendy!

Wendy's Cottage Caramel Corn

(the actual picture of the caramel corn was posted yesterday, didn't want to be repeating myself so enjoy this random google image).

1. In the microwave, pop 3 bags of popcorn (just the regular stuff is probably best, not the butter flavoured unless you really like butter). Once popped, spread the popcorn in a single layer onto parchment lined cookie sheets. Preheat the oven to 225 degrees.

2. In a large pot, mix together 1 cup butter, 2 cups brown sugar, and 1/2 cup light corn syrup. Bring to a boil and boil on high heat for about 5 minutes. The mixture will puff up and settle when stirred.

3. After 5 minutes of boiling, add in 1/2 tsp baking soda and 1 tsp vanilla and mix well. Remove from heat and immediately drizzle over the popcorn.

4. Bake the popcorn in the oven for 1 hour, stirring every 20 minutes or so to evenly coat the popcron with the syrup.

**DO NOT BAKE THE POPCORN ON THE BOTTOM RACK OR THE POPCORN WILL BURN!

5. Store the caramel corn in an airtight container until ready to serve!

For my birthday party on Friday, I plan on making strawberry shortcake cupcakes. I want them sort of layered like this Martha wedding cake version:

But obviously in cupcake fashion, not 3 tiered cake version.

I'll post the recipe that accompanies this photo (or my own version) once I bake them, hopefully either tonight if time permits or tomorrow morning OR tomorrow evening. Which will be my birthday. Yeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!

I also wanted to paper mache my own pinata for the party but there's not enough time. I was thinking something along the lines of this:

Hahaha obviously not. Life-sized zebra pinata? I don't have that many hours of free time to even make the structure for that. Neither do I have access to a zebra that I could paper mache over.

Well friends, I'm off to enjoy my last day of 24.
Tomorrow I officially enter the quarter century club.
BIRTHDAAAAAYYYYY